Sociology's Complexity

Abstract

Engaging with recent keynote reflections on `sociology at the end of the millennium', this article critically examines ways in which the current discourse of complexity can be related to characterizations of the intellectual style of sociology. After taking issue with the familiar characterization of sociology as quintessentially modernist, where modernist equates to `reductionist' and `simplistic', three more specific interventions are construed as contributions to the complexity debate. One is the growing preference for inter- and post-disciplinarity over traditional (socio-logical) disciplinarity. The second is John Urry's proposal for new rules of sociological method along the lines of chaos and complexity theory. The third is the assumption that in the `network society' analysis of authors like Manuel Castells we have a substantive account which conforms directly to that fluid philosophical mind-set, rather than to conventional sociological framings. Since I do not seek to devalue complexity discourse as such, and since I advance support for the idea of trans-disciplinarity, the aims of this article are not merely conservative. However, each of the three lines of thought considered is defective, and the complexity of sociological discourse itself merits greater recognition.